Saturday 24 - Friday 30 May, 2008

Ex-Stasi agents are at the heart of a spy-scandal currently rocking Germany. Najem Wali is amazed by the silence of his fellow Iraqi writers. Daniel Libeskind explains why he doesn't build for dictators. Three German museum directors are sharing the knowledge of the world with a sheik in Dubai, in return for wads of cash. And Peter Handke has issued some impenetrable words about Yugoslavia. read more

Saturday 17 - Friday 23 May, 2008

After the honour killing in Hamburg, women's rights activist Serap Cileli tells Germans to draw the line. Columbian journalist Hector Abad Faciolince discovers what his countrymen are worth - in US visa dollars. Neofascist historical revisionism is up and saluting in Italy. Bahman Nirumand examines Abdolkarim Soroush's thesis that not God but Mohammed wrote the Koran. And having overdosed on the naivety of new German feminism, the SZ wishes it was a meatball in Poland. read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 16 May, 2008

Novelist Franzobel warns against demonising Josef Fritzl: the ordinary is the unheimlich. Iraqi writer Najem Wali accuses Arab regimes of using Israel as a scapegoat for self-inflicted woes. Historian Benny Morris says that Israelis have given up hope of peace. Die Welt is blown away by Gerhard Richter's influence in China. And Japanologist Florian Coulmas watches the Roman alphabet fizzle out in Cyberspace. read more

Saturday 3 - Friday 9 May, 2008

The Olympic games belong to the athletes, not the politicians: this is the argument today, just as it was in 1936, against a boycott of the host country. Slavenka Drakulic explains her dislike of the word "Balkanisation". Elfriede Jelinek writes about the architecture of fear in Armstetten. The SZ asks whether Rem Koolhaas' CCTV tower is an "building of evil" and Jacques Herzog explains how democracy weighs heavily on an architect's dreams. read more

Saturday 26 April - Friday 2 May, 2008

As Wolfgang Wagner finally hands over the reins in Bayreuth, the feuilletons opine on the future of the operatic dynasty. The blogs answer to the open letter by the German music industry calling for tight internet surveillance on music downloading. Sociologist Peter Wagner is not surprised at the return of a corrupt government in Italy: it serves the interests of a corrupt populace. And the Berlin newspapers take up the case of Russian artist Anna Mikalchuk whose body was dragged up in the Spree.
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